DISQUS

Hey Laura,

Great meeting you -- and thanks so much for all of the effort you put into the registration table!

Tim

Nick, I've told you before that I read you because of your tweets about blog posts. I'm getting back into RSS, but still I don't hit the popular blogs as much due to volume. Your headlines grab me on Twitter, and that's why you continue to have my attention, at least from a blog perspective.

My usage is down, too. Really focused on cutting out the intermittent distractions. But, I do use Twitter for instant communication with peeps, and for coordinating meeting up in person (DM's to my phone).

With the freedom to blog or talk about whatever you want to comes the responsibility to be held accountable for your words. It's unfortunate that society rewards those who post false accusations. It's the precise reason tabloids are so popular, but yet not reputable.

I'd get more specific on my analysis, but I'd prefer not to pop up on some peoples' radar screens.

As CTO, didn't you set the policy for what sites were banned? Or couldn't you at least circumvent them?

I don't have a consistent friending policy. When I get a request from someone I don't know, I look at mutual contacts and their profile to get an idea if I want to connect, and make a decision on an individual basis.

Where it gets dicier is unfriending and selectively friending people you know. I've unfriended a couple loose acquaintances who pollute my newsfeed with melodramatic status updates (only to have them stalk me with requests). I've also *not* unfriended a person because I don't want to deal with the fallout (thank you limited profile groups!).

You wrote:

"Last night I finally the realized the significance of the revolution taking place. You can instantly set up your brand via a blog, cross promote it on social networks and suddenly you have distributed brand you to the masses."

That alone is huge. I think the most important piece of this revolution is that you don't have to be the next Apple, Google, Coke, or BMW of what you do. You don't have to be a megabrand. You don't even have to be Gary Vaynerchuk. By branding yourself you're positioning YOU with your skills and interests and a consistent effort at that alone gets you noticed by audiences in your space -- and that space expands beyond the "web community."

You hit me back on a series of tweets over the weekend. I agree, why fill out another profile? But what about one master profile to feed all others? I also think there are serious privacy/ownership issues at stake, and though I'm not well read on OpenSocial, perhaps they can/will create standards and safeguard this?

Here are my tweets pasted, to get the ideas out there. Reverse-chronological:

timcourtney: @biznickman And how much of ourselves do we own? How much have I signed away in EULAs already? Does it even matter? Food for thought. 05:55 PM March 29, 2008

timcourtney: @biznickman Exciting, very. But I haven't stopped to think re: the implications. Our personal lives are vulnerable even to a simple hacker.

timcourtney: What if I could own my own identity server, like OpenID, & keep all my social data there. *I* would own/ctrl it, and it would feed services.

timcourtney: It would make a sweet movie, too.

timcourtney: What will come of the future of data privacy and ownership? The more I live my life online and in SaaS-land, the more I ask that question.

timcourtney: Living life on the social web is weird. del.icio.us bookmarks fed to Facebook, etc. More strategic links get clicked 'do not share.'

Thanks for posting this. I love hearing from people how they innovate and build culture when starting companies. Lots of nuggets in this one.

Nick, I think you're on track here when you bring this back to the average Joe. I learned a lot one day when I was hanging out with a few completely non-techie friends on their laptops and watched them use Facebook. It was a new playground for them -- one where they added goofy apps, clicked, on ads, and participated in tons of surveys (none of which I do on a regular basis). Us heavy users are fairly advanced in both our understanding of social networking sites and in our knowledge of social graph theory. Until it becomes transparent and natural for the user, this won't happen. That means, until you no longer have to link up various services and mash things together (feed my Twitter updates to FB, etc), this won't be the next TV.

But when it does happen, it'll be fascinating.

Congrats on winning the video, and good job! I'd like to see Zell walk down the street in Chicago if he does change it.

I'm curious what people think. While you cite Mark Cuban talking about *newspaper* blogs, what about company blogs? We're in technology, does the word 'blog' carry the same stigma?

My thought is the word 'Blog' tells the audience what type of communication channel you're using, and what they should expect as far as how content is delivered. For B2B, somewhat tech-savvy audiences, does "blog" still carry the stigma of negativity, snarkiness, and amateur journalism?

Does anyone have a link to a video of the full developer garage Q&A? I found a short clip from searching, but that's it.

...if it wasn't for everyone looking for blog-fodder, this would have blown over.

Just watched the interview. The disruptions were only a fraction of what I thought they were, considering how much Twitter erupted over it. Sure, maybe the interview was a bit awkward, but it wasn't a bomb. It's all blown out of proportion.

The one comment I think stands is Sarah's about the "Digg-style community management." As much of a non-issue as this should have been, the crowd was quite immature.

@Mari there is, it's a link under the app invite that says Block This Application. I've used that button a lot :-D

Thanks for sharing the slideshow.

I want to see this idea of universal identity start being a repository for all of my permissions and all of my accounts, everywhere. Somehow there would need to be incentive for, say a permission-based email marketer, to buy into such a system and honor it (perhaps opportunity to find more subscribers?).

Per the "bill of rights" included, ownership is more and more of a concern/issue now that we cede our data to 3rd party hosted providers. At the end of the day, what do we own? An XML file of our social graph and profile info? How useful does that ownership become if one were to say get booted from Facebook?

I'm a twitter n00b, and really only have a handful of followers and people I'm following. Is there an easy way to get my Plaxo contacts into Twitter? There I have a lot more business contacts and I think it will become more interesting when I'm able to hear from more people.

With that I want a central place to manage all of my subscriptions to anything related to my email address, and postal address for that matter. With a central identity manager, I want control over who sends me solicitations for whatever, period.

I've actually kicked this idea around a little as a business, though haven't been serious enough about it as it looks F/T and I'm not looking to make that kind of jump right now.

And now that I've subscribed to BusinessWeek, The Economist, Wired, and FastCompany (yay frequent flier miles), I'm getting solicitations for everything, including timeshares. Ugg.

PS - need it today, no time to order online :-)

So, Twitter worked for you yesterday. I wonder if Facebook will work for me today -- check my status, I'm looking for an Asian gong in Naperville. I've called everywhere I can think of, save Chinese restaurants. Can't spend any more time on it now...but if you or the blogosphere knows, please drop me a line!

I really would like to find a way to get all of my FB friends' AIM screen names off of FB so I can add the ones of my choice to my AIM client. I tried FriendCSV, but it doesn't export AIM screennames. Anyone know how to do this?

Hey, congrats on this! Any pictures up on the tubes?

I've had projector foibles before ... an older computer we used for a PPT machine crapped out and stopped displaying sponsors' text. Won't let that happen again! :-)

Re: your twitter, I just got an evite this week for a baby's 1yo birthday party. The sender wouldn't be considered web2.0 savvy, at least in terms of the 'cool' web sites out there to send invites. Now that I think of it, I've gotten 2-3 other evites in the past from others in the same circle.

I get the sense that evite is still a player among non-techie, casual web users who are more concerned with getting the word out about something rather than using the newest, coolest, most integrated app.

I use Eventbrite for large events, but it seems complex and oriented towards large functions and paid events rather than social invitations like to parties. Another one that's simple and interesting is ImThere (www.imthere.com), though it's its own social network and therefore gaining critical mass to be useful among friends is an issue.

For me, I'd just as soon use Facebook's events, and have, even with people who aren't on Facebook. It's integrated with what I'm doing every day and I don't have to go anywhere else to manage my events. I can even add them to my Google Calendar (that I sync with iCal, Thunderbird, etc).

I log into Friendster once or twice a year now to delete messages from spam profiles. I think only 1-2 people I care about are on there and not Facebook, and those people don't log in either.

I just added Scoble as a friend yesterday. Today, I messaged his wall (the most effective way to get his attention, according to him) with an invite to Silicon Prairie Social while he's in Chicago for Blog Business Summit, and the possibility of securing some interviews for PodTech that I really believe he will find interesting.

No response yet. I won't take it personally if I don't hear back. He doesn't know me or have a reason to listen to me, and I do know he's busy as a lot of people are trying to get his attention. I would enjoy a response (and would love to see him at the event) though!

My real issue with Facebook friends is dealing with unfriending people I don't know well. My biggest pet peeve is passive-aggressive status updates from "friend-of-a-friend" types or old classmates I only saw in the hallway. It annoys me to see their drama in my feed when I don't know them and I'm not invested in their lives.

Plus, I think it's childish to post updates like that for the whole world to see.

The other day, I unfriended a girl who is a friend-of-a-friend for just that thing. The next day, I get a friend request from her! I thought about it, and clicked ignore because she's probably requesting me via one of those 'import your email contacts' forms, and not putting much thought into it. If she ends up confronting me in person, I'll kindly but honestly explain why.

How do you deal with Facebook friend weirdness?